


Samba

by Everyday_Im_Narrating



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Brazil, Gen, Grief, Kidfic, also: adventures in Brazil, bb!Cora, because eff it, grief cw, let me have this one, this is just Lil!Cora dealing with losing her family, you spanish speakers get to hog every headcanon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 12:52:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8014738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Everyday_Im_Narrating/pseuds/Everyday_Im_Narrating
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eight-year-old Cora runs from her worst nightmare: the house she grew up in, everyone she's ever loved, burning down to the ground. At least she isn't alone - and this feeble silver lining is what leads her to a whole different hemisphere, a whole different chapter of her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bistiles (alis)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alis/gifts).



Cora is small and scared when she runs from the burning house. Runs as far as her skinny legs will take her, deep into the preserve, chest heaving and tear tracks drying with the wind as she goes.

She seeks shelter under a tree and passes out, exhausted, wanting to wake up and have it all be just a really bad nightmare. Wanting to crawl into Laura’s bed and hide her face in her big sister’s shoulder, or hold Derek’s strong hands until she falls back to sleep, but can’t. Can’t because they’re dead, and Mom and Dad are dead, and Uncle Peter is dead, and she’s all alone. It’s suffocating. She’s ten. She’s _ten years old_ and it’s too much, it’s too much.

When she opens her eyes again, there’s a person - werewolf. Definitely a werewolf - crouched next to her, all dark skin and kind eyes and concerned frown. She doesn’t want to talk to whoever this is. She wants home, only home doesn’t exist anymore, and she’s sick and lost, but the person keeps talking to her in soothing, gentle tones, and doesn’t touch her - the not touching helps. She doesn’t think she could handle it right now - and says enticing words like ‘pack’ and ‘home’ and ‘family’. Mentions being in the US visiting extended family but having to go home to Brazil the next day. Asks if she has anyone, and she’s sobbing when she shakes her head, flashing bright yellow eyes in warning. Asks if she wants to come along. She doesn’t think she has a choice; it’s trusting this person - Suelen. Her name is Suelen. Mentally, Cora spells it _Swelling_ \- or staying out here in the woods alone and scared and hungry. Suelen offers her a hand that she doesn’t take, but instead follows closely, side by side, not saying a word.

She boards a plane with the woman, who talks loudly and continuously about how Cora is going to love Brazil. How warm it is. How the food is delicious. How her pack is going to love Cora as well. She doesn’t care. The pack that loved her is gone. The food she loved most - Mom’s cooking, Derek and Laura’s adventures in baking, Dad’s tea - is gone. She’d gladly never be warm again in her life if it meant having her home back. But she listens to Suelen, and curls up in her seat with the airplane pillow, and grabs tightly onto the soft armrest when the plane takes off. It’s not a pleasant feeling; it makes her belly tighten and her ears hurt. Eventually she falls asleep, and no matter how many times she wakes up from bad dreams, Suelen never fails to soothe her down with soft words until she can close her eyes again. It’s a long flight. When she’s not sleepy anymore, Cora just sits and stares at the little screen above her, showing a picture of a map and a tiny airplane. Showing how far she is from home. She wants to disappear.

When Suelen escorts her through the airport - this time she doesn’t ask before taking Cora’s hand; instead just says she’s sorry but the place is crowded and she doesn’t want Cora to get lost or taken - she’s still entirely silent. People around her are speaking a language she doesn’t recognize, but the woman speaks it perfectly with other Brazilians; it sounds a little like Spanish (Derek spoke Spanish. Dad spoke it too. Cora never learned more than _buenos días, por favor,_ and _qué guapa es la niña_ ) but it’s not. Later, Suelen will tell her it’s Portuguese, and assure her she’ll learn it soon enough.

In other circumstances she’d be curious about everything and everyone, but now, she’s numb. She doesn’t protest or argue when Suelen pulls her along to meet a small family of three, all werewolves too, who get very enthusiastic about trying to touch her before Suelen says something in Portuguese and they stop. Cora doesn’t know what they’re saying, but she appreciates the restraint, and when she has to ride in the backseat of a car squished between complete strangers, she doesn’t think much of it. Doesn’t appreciate the view. The sun is too bright, the sky too blue, it makes her nauseous.

An eternity later, they arrive at a house. It’s all Cora registers. There’s a child waiting in the house, maybe a year or two younger than her, and who she can only assume is the child’s mother; a very loud woman with the curliest hair Cora has ever seen. She only needs five minutes of conversation with Suelen before she goes into the child’s room - Cora follows, inquisitive - and pulls out a mattress from beneath the bed. Minutes later, there it is, a makeshift bed for Cora with soft sheets and a fluffy pillow. Somewhere in the back of her mind she is grateful for this family who took her in without a question, a small point of brightness in the middle of the storm in her mind.

She sleeps most of the day.

Her growling stomach wakes her in the afternoon, enough to make her venture out of the room, and bless her, the child’s mother - Cora doesn’t know her name - can hear it clearly. She seems to forget Cora doesn’t speak Portuguese for a moment, but then shakes her head, laughs at herself, and makes a hand gesture for Cora to follow her into the kitchen. Before she knows it, she’s sitting at the table with a crunchy buttered roll and a glass of yellow juice in front of her, which she devours without a second thought. (The juice is sweeter than she imagined, catches a little on the tongue. It’s good enough.)

It’s not home, but it’ll do.

(to be continued)


	2. Carnaval

On the first week and a half, Cora is completely numb.

She sleeps more than she stays awake, showers when Suelen reminds her to, eats very little and not very often. Everything feels like slow motion. The rest of the Araujo family - the boy, the mother, the father - speak very little English, if at all, which to her is a blessing. They try to talk to her, awkwardly, and stop when she doesn’t respond; she only communicates when she needs something she absolutely can’t do herself. They eventually stop trying to pull her out of it, even the father.

He likes to touch. Not in a ‘stranger danger’ way, no, but Cora can smell his pity when he puts his hand on her shoulder, or when he pats her back or ruffles her hair. She hates it. It makes her sick. She must smell like misery all the time. Still, she doesn’t smack his hand away. They took her in; they’re doing so much for her. Without them, she’d be on the street. They can touch whatever they want.

Why? Why are they doing so much? Why does she get the nice big house and the soft bed and the rice-and-beans and the affection, while Mom and Dad and Laura and Derek and Uncle Peter don’t even get to breathe anymore? What makes her better? Nothing. Laura was better in every single way and she’s dead. Derek was so good and dorky and weird and he’d dead. Uncle Peter still told her stories before bedtime even though she was ten, Mom taught her how to care for plants and how to be a good fighter, Dad gave big bear hugs and helped her with her homework. Dead dead dead. She doesn’t want to be the exception. She’s the kid. Nobody needed _her_! She’s the one who needed everybody else. If anyone should have gone first, it should have been her. If she thinks about it too long, she ends up working herself into a panic attack, and then it’s poor nineteen-year-old Suelen who has to talk her down. She prefers not to think at all.

Suelen’s family is so, so good to Cora, though. They take her shopping for clothes and school supplies and a few toys. They enroll her in school and in a Portuguese course for foreigners. Suelen’s mother, Dona Josi, packs her a nice snack to take to school every day, and school lets out at noon, so she always has lunch at the new house (not home. Home burned down. She won’t be home ever again.) with Dona Josi and the eight-year-old boy whose name is Daniel, but they pronounce it funny.

School sucks. She understands very little, the other kids are loud and obnoxious and look at her like she’s from another planet, and the teachers’ patience wears out quick when they see that she’s not trying to speak Portuguese - to speak at all, really - as much as they’d like her to.

(What’s the point of talking when everything hurts and you’re totally, completely, hopelessly lost? The Araujo family is incredibly sweet, but they’re not Cora’s. They’re not pack. Everything she knew is either ashes or many, many miles away, and if she doesn’t keep her mouth shut, she’ll scream herself hoarse. They should be glad she’s just quiet.)

Mostly, whenever she’s not in class, she sits and plays with a stick of play-doh that Dona Josi bought her. Squeezing and molding the dough into shapes helps relax her, distracts her a little, and it’s something she can do on her own in a corner while the other kids tumble and play.

At the house she doesn’t cause any trouble - no more than she absolutely has to, at least - but the numbness eventually starts to fade and give way to a profound kind of anger. The kind that burns and hurts and writhes inside her like a wounded animal, and she can’t contain it all inside, she can’t, _she can’t_. It has to seep out somewhere.

It happens at school.

It happens when she’s walking to her usual corner and passes a group of boys who are playing that game where one person crouches on the floor holding a jump rope and spins it around for the others to skip. The first round is over, the boy in the center asks Cora if she wants to play, and she says _não_. He asks if he’s sure, she says _não_. (If he had asked what day it was, she’d have said _não_.) And then he decides to stand up and use the rope as a lace around her waist to pull her into the circle.

He’s on the floor in two seconds. His nose is bleeding in three, and in four, Cora is wolfing out, momentarily forgetting all the careful training she got from Mom and Dad and Uncle Peter and her older siblings.

In five seconds, there’s a teacher yanking her away from the boy, and in six she realizes what she did - what she must look like - _crap, crap, crap_. Cora runs to the bathroom and hides there until her hands stop shaking and the teacher is banging on the stall door for her to come out.

Dona Josi is called to the principal’s office, along with Cora, the teacher, the boy - whose nose is all patched up but there’s a big, purple bruise on his face - and the boy’s pissed off father. She doesn’t understand everything they’re saying, but understands enough that she’s in trouble. Dona Josi is calmer than Cora had expected for someone who smells like she’s about to commit gruesome murder, assures the boy’s father it won’t happen ever again (from what Cora can tell, anyway) and they’re almost out the door when the boy says something Cora understands very, very well. He says she looked like a _monster_ when she was hitting him. Dona Josi knows better than to write it off as a figure of speech.

When she arrives at the house, there’s a lot of yelling. Dona Josi is angrier than Cora has ever seen her, bright Alpha eyes flashing as she screams words like ‘secret’ and 'ruined’ and 'regret’. Cora doesn’t know enough Portuguese to explain herself - though she doubts she’d be able to even in English - and just keeps repeating the same word over and over. _Desculpa, desculpa, desculpa_. Dona Josi grabs her harshly by her skinny wrist and shoves her into the bedroom she shares with Daniel, tells her to stay there and be quiet until dinner.

She understands perfectly why Dona Josi was mad. In a single moment of rage, Cora had almost revealed the most important, most dangerous secret there can be in a family of werewolves. It could make them have to move. It could get them killed. Could get their house burned down by hunters, oh God, _oh God_ , she can’t stay there. She’s a danger. She’s a goddamn liability.

She writes a note saying ’ _obrigada por tudo_ ’ (thank you for everything) and leaves it on her pillow. Empties out her big, heavy school backpack and shoves in some clothes along with a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a comb. After a minute of hesitation, Cora packs her play-doh too, steals the half eaten pack of _biscoito de polvilho_ from Daniel’s nightstand, grabs the backpack, and leaves through the window.

This time, Cora doesn’t run. She’s not in a hurry. (She was a borrowed stepdaughter. They’re probably glad they won’t have to look after her anymore.) This time she just walks until she’s tired, until she’s reached a square with a few sparse trees and a concrete bench, and plops down on it heavily.

She’s still angry. Maybe angrier than before. At herself for being stupid and reckless and very nearly exposing the Araujos’ secret - a secret that could get them killed, burned to nothing by a hunter in disguise, just like the Hales.

Mad at them for taking her in. What were they doing? Were they _crazy_? Cora could be a monster for all they knew, gave them nothing but silence in exchange for their hospitality, and they’d let her into the family anyway. Like she deserves that much kindness. They should have known she was going to mess something up eventually; she always does. She broke Derek’s science project trying to help him make it. She was mad at Dad the night before they died. (Does he know she’s not mad anymore? Does he know she loves him? _Does he?_ ) She borrowed Laura’s shirts to sleep and got jam on them at breakfast, more than once. She’d never messed up so seriously before, of course, but the Araujos should have known it was only a matter of time.

Mad at her family for dying, even though rationally she knows it’s not their fault. They still left her. She should have stayed and burned with them, at least they’d still be together. (Maybe a ten-year-old isn’t supposed to think about dying so often. Then again, most ten-year-olds don’t have awful nightmares about houses on fire and charred flesh, either.)

She wants home so bad it hurts. Laura would have told her to hang in there and that she’d be okay, because Laura really did believe they were strong enough to face anything; Laura was an idiot. (A beautiful, intelligent, kind, _wonderful_ idiot who shouldn’t even have been home that night. Should have been out with Camden. If he hadn’t canceled their date, she’d still be alive. Cora is pissed at Camden too.) Derek would have held her hands tight until she stopped shaking, but Derek’s not there. He’s dead. Mom and Dad would have given her that rib-crushing double hug that she misses more than anything in the whole world. Uncle Peter would have tried to distract her with candy and an inappropriate joke she wouldn’t completely understand.

(Suelen would have sat next to her and soothed her down with words spoken in a thick accent. Dona Josi would have smiled at her and tried to get her to eat something. Seu Paulo, the father, would have patted her on the shoulder, maybe squeezed it a little. Daniel would smile shyly and give her a sympathy shrug. It’s pathetic that she’s already so familiar with how each member of the Araujo family would have tried to make her feel better, because she’s needed it so many times already. Now they won’t have to worry. She’s glad for them.)

The backpack and the too-warm bench aren’t very comforting at all.

Cora stays out in the square until the night falls, just squeezing and molding the stick of play-doh until it’s not enough and she has to take her anger and fear and frustration out on something bigger. By the time the sky darkens, a skinny little tree has already fallen victim to her claws, and she’s quietly wondering what else she’ll have to destroy until it stops hurting.

It’s not long before she falls asleep with her head on her backpack, not caring about the zipper leaving imprints on her cheek or how the night breeze is raising goosebumps on her skin. It’s not a restful sleep, but it’s sleep nonetheless, and anyone who passes her by will just think she’s a homeless child; she won’t be the first or last one they see, so they won’t bother.

Cora wakes up about an hour later from a nightmare, mumbles something, and goes back to sleep. She wakes up again in what must have been several hours, surrounded by the smell of relief and fondness and fading panic and Suelen’s soft fleece jacket wrapped around her.

“Never, ever scare us like that again, okay?” 

Suelen’s voice is thick like she’s been crying, and Cora doesn’t have the energy or the will to resist when the young woman hoists her up onto her lap and hugs her close. She’s too tired to be mad and too hurt and confused to be anything else, so she just hides her face in Suelen’s neck and cries quietly, little body trembling, entirely pliant as Suelen strokes her hair and kisses the top of her head. It’s not like her family’s way to comfort her, but it’s enough that she feels safe to let out things that are too big to contain in her skinny chest and she can’t quite comprehend. The anger melts into tears for the time being, and only when she’s stopped shaking does Suelen take her to the car where Dona Josi is waiting patiently, smelling of relief and guilt. Cora doesn’t want her to feel guilty, so she does what Daniel seems to do all the time - what she used to do to _her_ parents - and reaches her arms out for a brief but tight hug, whispering a few more apologies that Dona Josi quickly shuts down. _There’s been enough apologizing_ , Suelen says. Tells her they need to talk about her control over her shift, but it’s a conversation, not a fight. (Cora is still not too thrilled about touching or being touched by them, but today is a different day and the moment calls for it. She shivers slightly when she lets go, her heart refusing to accept that being hugged by a mother who isn’t her own actually feels good, but Cora manages to play it off as just being cold and snuggles tighter in Suelen’s red jacket.)

It’s a turning point for Cora and the Araujo family. She doesn’t become part of the family right there, no; this isn’t a movie and Cora is still hurting too much to even consider the thought of being anything less than one hundred percent Hale. But she starts allowing herself to participate more. She lets Seu Paulo check her homework and accepts his pats on the back a little less sulkily. Helps Dona Josi bake an orange cake in the middle of one afternoon, lets herself have fun with it. Makes her bed and Daniel’s on the weekend. Asks Suelen about her college and what she does there, and is genuinely interested in the answer.

But the first time Cora is actually excited about something, post-fire, is a week after the incident with the boy at school. There have been these really colorful ads on TV for a while - a beautiful black woman dancing in brightly colored body paint and high heels, feet moving swiftly as CGI confetti falls all around her - and now they’re interspersed with footage of big parades. She’s heard of Carnaval before, vaguely, but had no idea it was this colorful, this beautiful. Suelen grins all big when she asks more about it.

“It’s a party that goes on for days.” She explains, excitement in her voice and her scent. Cora thinks it’s the cutest thing in the world when Suelen gets all happy over something she’s passionate about. “There’s parades. The best ones are in Rio, but we in São Paulo have a bit of a grudge against them, so we don’t admit that.” She laughs. “People dress up in costumes, there’s dancing, acrobatics - oh, and do you know that song from Les Miserables?”

Suelen pronounces it funny, and Cora chuckles, shaking her head. Laura and Dad both loved musicals, but Dad was an Andrew Lloyd Weber kind of guy, and Laura could sing all the songs from Wicked and Lion King and Rent. She’s heard of Les Mis, but never seen it.

“There’s a song that goes _'when the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums’_. That’s exactly it. When you’re at the parade and you hear those drummers marching right next to you, it’s a feeling you can’t really describe. We have to take you to see it someday.”

It sounds amazing, and Suelen’s excitement makes it even better. Cora feels her heart jump in a good way that she hasn’t felt in almost two months.

“I’d love that.” She agrees with a smile, a little shy. Suelen reaches for her hand and she gladly allows the contact.

“This year we’re not gonna have the cash, but I think next year we’ll be able to go to Rio. You’ll see.” Suelen grins. “But there’s other ways we celebrate Carnaval. We have street blocks, you ever heard of those?”

Cora shakes her head and tilts her face curiously.

“Basically you go out to party in the street. In costumes. With confetti and glitter and spray foam and everything.” She bounces a little on her seat. “I’m going as Cinderella. Who do you wanna be?”

Cora thinks for a moment before snapping her fingers with the best idea she’s had in a while.

“Can I be the girl mouse? And Daniel could be the boy mouse, the skinny one!”

Suelen laughs, says it’s perfect. They plan their costumes and spend a weekend making them - sewing patches onto big shirts for the mouse costumes, making ears and tails out of felt and plastic tiaras, fixing up a blue dress to make it look more like Cinderella’s.

Days later, jumping around and dancing in the middle of the crowd, with glitter on her face and a small seed of samba in her feet, Cora doesn’t feel at home yet. Not in the same way she felt with her parents and siblings and uncle, back where everyone spoke English and she knew every corner of the neighborhood forwards and backwards. 

But maybe, just maybe, this could be her second home.

**Author's Note:**

> Remember the time Brazilian Tumblr went crazy over the idea that Cora spent a lot of her life down here? Well, this is me officially posting all this madness to AO3.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
